


Lending a Hand

by salanaland



Series: Skywalker Family Feels [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Anakin Skywalker's C+ Parenting Skills, Artoo De Troll, Dad Jokes, Force Ghost Anakin Skywalker, Gen, Parent squick
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-29
Updated: 2020-01-29
Packaged: 2021-02-27 16:34:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22466491
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/salanaland/pseuds/salanaland
Summary: Sometimes Luke finds help in unexpected places. And sometimes he finds less helpful things.
Relationships: Anakin Skywalker | Darth Vader & Luke Skywalker
Series: Skywalker Family Feels [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1616419
Comments: 9
Kudos: 284





	Lending a Hand

Luke wakes from formless but unsettling dreams to find he's being stared at. Blue eyes--blue face--blue glow--

"Are you _watching me sleep_?"

"It's a thing parents do," the apparition says defensively.

Luke reaches up to rub his face, and pokes himself in the eye for his trouble. Right. Now he remembers the ion blast that shut down his X-wing, scrambled Artoo, and confused his mechanical hand. He'd wrestled the controls left-handedly into an unpowered landing-- _not_ his best piloting ever--and ejected Artoo and himself before they all drowned. He'd found a shallow coastal cave to conceal themselves in for the time being, and used the Force to cover the entrance loosely with rocks and driftwood, before the aches of impact and the stabbing pains from his malfunctioning hand had knocked him out.

He elbows himself to a sitting position, while his fingers try to tie themselves in knots, and leans over to examine Artoo. "How ya feeling, buddy?" The droid emits a few distorted bleeps and bloops, and Luke nods. "I'm a little better too, but still--" he tries to flex his fingers but ends up making an extremely rude gesture--"malfunctioning. Tell ya what, why don't we both run our diagnostic and repair routines again?" He clumsily pats the droid's dome and smiles, and Artoo puts himself into self-repair mode. Luke manages to extricate his right hand from its scorched glove, and tries to open the maintenance hatch at his wrist.

"Oh, that's _nice_. Looks really good. Almost like flesh and blood." He'd almost forgotten the ghost of his father was there.

"It'd look better without the burn marks. And if the hatch wasn't jammed." Luke tries to pry it open, first with the fingernails of his left hand, then with the Force, but the pain distracts him.

"I used to keep a set of tools in my astromech," Anakin offers, "for this sort of situation."

"Well," Luke retorts, frustrated, "you obviously had a lot more mechanical body parts that could break down, didn't you?"

"No, I meant, when I had just the one hand." The spirit shows its right hand, all metal and wire. "I don't suppose you modified your droid with..." He crouches down and looks at the little astromech, smiling crookedly. "Ask him if he's still holding onto item 75D."

"What?"

"Just ask him."

Luke sighs and asks, "Hey Artoo, do you have an 'item 75D'?" The droid tweetles and produces a small pouch from somewhere within, which Luke takes and opens, confused.

Item 75D apparently consists of small tools and a collection of tiny springs and wires. Luke selects a small, flat bit of metal that looks like a repurposed nail file, and manages to disengage the bent catch holding the wrist panel closed. "Well, that's a mess." He pops up the palm sensory array to reveal a further snarl of charred, sparking circuitry.

"It shouldn't be too hard to get it working," the ghost encourages him. "Just bypass the primary control chip and reroute the tertiary power modulator into the backup phalangeal nociceptor--"

Luke tries to remember the schematics of his hand. Basic field repairs are one thing, but several major components are blackened and his entire arm is wracked with spasms from some kind of short in his palm and--

"Luke! You can do this, I'll walk you through it." His father's face looms close to his, scarred brow creased with concern. "First you need to power it down. Do they still put the emergency switch between the last two fingers?"

It turns out that the emergency switch has been relocated to underneath the fingernails, a design improvement that Anakin loudly approves of. "This way, if someone tries to torture you by shoving things under your fingernails, you won't feel it."

"That's useful, I guess," Luke says doubtfully. "Although I wouldn't be able to use my hand for escaping afterwards."

"You could turn it back on with the Force. Now reorder the interrupts to prioritize--"

"Father, I have _no_ idea what you're talking about here."

Anakin assures him, "It's just like building a droid."

"Which I've also never done."

Artoo burbles a confused query, and Luke explains, "I'm talking to my father through the Force. He's trying to help me with my hand." Artoo flashes all his lights, squeals, hovers, and spins his dome around. All his attachments wave wildly, including some that Luke hasn't seen before. Several small compartments open, and Artoo ejects a variety of items with a rude noise. A melted lump of what might have once been candy, a piece of lace gone brittle and yellow with age, grubby currency from different planets, metal odds and ends, an ancient packet of some sort of healing ointment, neatly coiled bits of wire--

"Don't, don't look at that one, Luke," Anakin says, trying and failing to pick up the lace. "No, don't--that was, that was your mother's--Artoo, _put this away right now_!"

Artoo, obviously, can't hear this order, but he rolls back and forth in a little dance, making sing-song beeps and rude noises. Luke isn't sure whether to laugh at this performance and the miserably embarrassed look on his father's face, or be incredibly horrified that he flew so many missions with a scrap of... _whatever_...in his droid.

Artoo spins around in a circle, beeping and blooping smugly, as Anakin continues to argue with him in vain. "I'm sure I appreciated your assistance and your discretion _at the time_ , but I also thought Obi-Wan didn't _know_ , but he obviously _did_ , so now I'm wondering why exactly my so-called loyal astromech droid has been keeping a piece of my wife's _underthings_ \--Luke, tell him to put it away! I'm begging you, _please_ , I can't--"

Luke averts his eyes from both his father and the offending textile. "Okay, Artoo, you've had your fun, you embarrassed him quite a bit. And me. Please, for everyone's sake, put it away." He waits until he hears the whirr and click of Artoo's storage compartment, then opens his eyes to glare and his mouth to demand answers from--

\--his father, who is seated on a rock, face in his hands, shoulders quaking as silent sobs wrack his--not body, surely, but his entire form. "Father?" Luke asks, sitting beside him. "What's wrong?"

"Everything." Anakin lifts his head to look at his son. "Me. That--" He gestures to Artoo. "That's the life we _should_ have. You're poking around in your father's old droid, you find something that makes you say, bleurgh, my parents actually did _that_ kind of stuff?" He makes a comically disgusted face, and Luke chuckles weakly.

"If it helps...bleurgh!" Luke mimics his father's expression. "I'm actually trying not to retch at the very idea."

Anakin smiles briefly, then turns somber again. "That's what we _should_ have had. Instead, we have--" He points at his own right hand, then Luke's. " _This_. I'm here to help you fix your hand, because _that's_ what we can share as father and son!" He waves his hands briefly, sardonically. "Because my old best friend told you I'd _killed_ your father, so of course you came to kill _me_ , and the best parenting _I_ could manage was _maiming_ you, so now I can use my expertise at fixing my own limbs to help fix yours!"

Luke looks at his feet, then reaches for a tiny tweezer and smiles slightly up at his father. "If it helps, I'd definitely appreciate your expert assistance here. If that's all we can have, that's what I want."

Anakin shakes his head. "It's too little, too late. You deserve more, better."

"Yeah, but _this_ ," Luke waves at his hand and his father, "is more than anyone could expect. More than I ever expected. I was raised an orphan, and yet here I am, sitting beside my father, the galaxy's expert on exactly what I need right now. I'd say the Force is definitely with me today." His smile widens and he holds out his half-disassembled hand. "So, can you help me out, Father?"

Anakin smiles and reaches for his son's hand. Then stops, eyes crinkling and smile widening mischievously. "Sure, I'll give you a _hand_."

Luke groans and narrows his eyes. "You'd _better_ , you took the last one. And now you're torturing me with 'dad jokes'."

Anakin laughs, once, and smiles even more. "Well, I _am_ your father."

Luke grins. "You're _impossible_." He disconnects the circuit his father indicates, and begins working out the carbon scoring with a tiny brush.

Anakin watches his son with a smile, directing him on bypassing faulty components and repairing or replacing others. His smile widens after a few minutes. "You know... I think Artoo's had that lace literally as long as you've been alive. I'm pretty sure it got torn the night you and your sister were conceived."

Luke's reaction is immediate and horrified. "Ugh! That's so...ugh! I don't even want to _think_ about that!" He gags dramatically and rolls his eyes. "Why would you _even_...! You're...ugh! Artoo, do you have anything in there for _nausea_? Because my father's being _disgusting_." Luke catches his father's eye and smiles through his grossed out face; Anakin laughs until he cries.


End file.
